Ditalini
dee-tah-LEE-nee
Tiny straight tube, the soup ditali.
5 mm across, 0.9 mm wall
Name. Ditali with the diminutive -ini. Little thimbles.
What it is
Ditalini is the small ditali, a tube a few millimetres across and about as long, the size of a fingertip thimble. It is the classic pasta for pasta e fagioli, pasta e ceci, and minestrone, cooked in the soup itself.
It is also the pasta of the Sicilian pasta with peas and of the Neapolitan pasta e patate, and a common first pasta for babies.
How to cook ditalini
7 to 10 minutes in boiling salted water. Al dente at 10 minutes, fully cooked at 10.
10:00
Start when the water returns to the boil.
Water and salt
- Pasta, dry
- 400 g
- Water
- 4 L
- Salt
- 40 g
100 g per person as a main. A litre and 10 g of salt per 100 g. Adjust with the portion calculator.
The steps
- Bring 4 L of water to a full boil in a tall pot. Add 40 g of salt when it boils.
- Add the ditalini. Stir for the first minute so nothing sticks. Start the timer when the water returns to the boil.
- Or cook it in the broth it will be served in, and do not drain it.
- Bite a piece at 9 minutes. A hairline of white at the centre is al dente.
- Scoop out a cup of the cooking water. Drain, or lift the pasta straight into the pan.
- Toss with the sauce over the heat for a minute. Add cooking water a splash at a time until it clings.
Read more: what al dente means and why the pasta water matters. Times for every shape are on the cook page.
How it holds sauce
A tiny tube cooks in the liquid it is served in and holds a bean or a pea in its bore. Soups, thick vegetable stews, and a simple tomato for children.
Pairs with: Pasta e fagioli · Pasta e ceci · Minestrone · In brodo · Pomodoro
Classic plates: Pasta e fagioli, Pasta e piselli, Pasta e patate, Minestrone.
By brand: numbers, cook times, spec sheets
1 brand, 1 product page.
| Brand | Product | Cook |
|---|---|---|
| Barilla | Ditalini | 11 min, al dente 10 |
Nutrition
Per 100 g of dry semolina pasta. The shape does not change these numbers. The dough does, so a whole wheat or egg version of this shape reads differently. See every dough.
| Per 100 g | Energy | Protein | Carbohydrate | Fibre | Fat | Sodium | Iron |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dry | 371 kcal | 13.0 g | 74.7 g | 3.2 g | 1.5 g | 6 mg | 3.3 mg |
| Cooked | 158 kcal | 5.8 g | 30.9 g | 1.8 g | 0.9 g | 1 mg | 1.3 mg |
One portion. 100 g dry becomes about 235 g cooked, 371 kcal and 13 g of protein. Pasta takes on 2.3 times its weight in the pot.
Who makes ditalini
28 ditalini products are catalogued, most of them sold in United States, Italy, Saudi Arabia. Of those, 2 are gluten-free, 5 are organic.
Brands: New World Pasta (3), DeLallo (2), Luigi Vitelli (1), American Beauty (1), San Giorgio (1), Barilla America Inc (1), Barilla (1), Prince (1), Ronzoni (1), Esselunga Bio (1).
No ditalini? Use these
Ranked by how they behave with sauce, not how they look. Full substitute list.
Side by side
Easy to confuse with
Other names
tubettini, ditalini rigati, ditalini lisci.
Sources
- Ditalini, Barilla (cook time, from the brand's own product page)
- Cook time: typical dried, brand pages.
- Photograph: Ditalini-230.jpg, Spamfeeded, CC BY-SA 3.0.
- Open Food Facts (products, brands, labels), Open Database License, read on 2026-08-25.
- USDA FoodData Central (nutrition per 100 g, by dough: FDC 169736, Pasta, dry, enriched; FDC 169737, Pasta, cooked, enriched, without added salt), public domain. The cooked yield is derived from the two energy figures.
- Ditalini, Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Q3711859, Wikidata
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.